It’s Monday What are you Reading 11/5/18

It’s Monday, and even though I just wanted to finish the book I am reading instead of writing this post, I enjoy reading other people’s posts too much to not contribute today.

I am linking my post up with other Monday book bloggers at teachmentortexts.com and unleashingreaders.com (thanks to Jen, Kellee, and Ricki for hosting). Both of these sites are loaded with blogs each Monday that will have you adding books to your to-be-read lists.

Books I Finished This Week:

This is the third and final book in The Nameless City series. You will look at the artwork and maybe guess that this takes place in China, far in the past,  but I believed that it was a medieval setting but an imagined place. The series has a lot of politics as different groups battle over The Nameless City for control of the trade in the region. The best parts of this series is where individuals and groups that are of different races attempt to find ways to create peace in the city and get along. There are some great characters with interesting backstories in this graphic series, and artwork that draws interest from fans of Amulet. This book brought a satisfying end to the series.

This is a book you can totally judge by it’s cover. The art is quite colorful and eye-catching and it is a funny story about teaching a giraffe to ski. I think the ski tips are great for humans learning as well, making this a good book to read over the next few months. I was lucky to get this picture book as part of my participation in the Book Portage ARC sharing group.

This was another picture book I got through Book Portage. I wasn’t sure how much I would like this book compared to other Josh Funk books, which I love, as I have never been to the New York Public Library (NYPL), and had heard that part of the deal with this book was that it was a celebration of the NYPL. But, for me there were three things that stood out: it was a celebration of the power of stories, a tale of friendship and yes, I also learned a bit about the library through the end notes in particular. The first two are more enough to make a book worth reading, and I also really liked the way the story was told with illustrations that bring the setting to life and pages that each have a perfect sized helping of rhymes.

Mixed in with primarily new books this week, I have a book that I missed out on 10 years ago when it was released. I wasn’t reading a lot of poetry at that time, but since I have become more interested in novels in verse. We recently had K.A. Holt at our school and one of our students asked the inevitable question, what books do you love and are inspired by? Ms. Holt replied that the book that was a real game changer for her was Sharon Creech’s Love that Dog as it helped her see a different way to write a novel, through verse. That compelled me to pluck this off my shelf. Much like K.A. Holt’s Rhyme Schemer, this story tells a year in the life of a student that finds poetry as a way to express one’s self. It is a very thought provoking read and the way Sharon Creech works in classic poems from authors like Robert Frost is interesting. If like me, you missed it, check this one out.

The Princess in Black is a series that I always like to catch up with along with my eight year old. We have been reading these together for years and one thing I thought of while reading this one is that it has been fun to watch the secondary characters grow into bigger roles, rather than having one or two main characters continue to solve problems on their own. The books have very unique and colourful pictures by LeUyen Pham, and these work with the action in the plot to keep this a requested early chapter series in my library.

Okay, I dragged out the publication of this post long enough to allow me to finish the book I was talking about at the start. At one point, I thought I would post at lunch and finish the book in the evening, but anyone who has worked at a school knows that planning to get something done at lunch is a risky proposition. I finished the book at my daughter’s basketball practice and did not get to the post until after that. But, that does allow me to mention how much I enjoyed this book, an honest look at really important issues such as poverty and gun control (oh, the discussions we will have with this at school someday). A book that shows that we just might not know the people around us quite as well as we think we do, as the main character certainly appears one way to students and teachers at school, but the reality is very different. A final observation, I really enjoy books in which the characters have really tough choices to make and this book is full of them. Lots for readers to debate about here.

Currently Reading:

This week my class finishes Amal Unbound as part of Global Read Aloud, and we just got to a part in which Amal has to make a key decisions and decide if she wants to take the hard road and try to make changes that transform her world. Just as in The Benefits of Being an Octopus, these are my favourite parts. My family continues to read The Thief Lord, a little more slowly than I would like. We are busy, I guess.

On deck

Here are some books I am considering for this week. The first in a NetGalley ARC I got a while ago, but the book itself doesn’t come out until January, so I am not pressured to read it and other things are coming up. The latter two, are books that children are pushing me to read (students, and my own respectively). I have lots of picture books to pick from as well.

Thanks for stopping by to read about my week, I hope you have a great reading week yourself.